MARKET COMMENTARY

Morning Comments January 28, 2019

Monday, January 28, 2019, 2:01 PM
Submitted by: Landus Cooperative

Opening calls:
Corn: 1 lower
Beans: 3 -4 lower

The corn market rallied Friday on news that the government will be reopening which will allow USDA reports to be published in the near future. The USDA has indicated that the February 8th Crop Report would include NASS crop data and stocks
and seeding data that was supposed to be released in January. The trade continues to be concerned about the size of the Brazilian crop with private analysts lowering their estimate of the crop almost weekly.

The soybean market opened a bit lower Friday, but that uncovered some demand and the bean market rallied back to post a decent close. Late morning news that there has at least been a temporary resolution to the government shutdown brought
some buying into the market and there is still the ongoing concern about the adverse effects of dry weather in Brazil that is supportive. The trade continues to be concerned about the size of the Brazilian crop with private analysts lowering their estimate
of the crop almost weekly. The problem for the market is that new crop soybean prices vs. new crop corn prices.

If the U.S. acreage does not change much and Chinese buying is minimal, we could be looking at a U.S. soybean carryout approaching or exceeding 1 billion bushels assuming an average U.S. 2019 crop. That is not friendly to the bean market
long term and we would urge producers to use whatever rallies we can get from either Chinese trade announcements or Brazilian weather uncertainty to clean up old crop sales and get some new crop sales on the books.

The March dollar index is trading either side of steady this morning at around 95.46. This morning the March crude oil contract is trading around $1.00 lower.